BUSINESS AND TECH NEWS

Teicneolaíocht trí mhean na Gaeilge

As someone who attended a gaelscoil, many people have said to me over the years that they wish they had the language. While not everyone has the time to do ranganna Gaeilge during the year, it is possible to bring Irish into your day to day life through technology.

Gmail:

Google launched Gmail as Gaeilge in December 2014. Their localisation team worked with Irish Googlers, Gaeilgeoirí and a small group of Irish language experts to put the service in place.

Speaking at the time of the launch a member of the Dublin localisation team named Laura Brassil, explained:

“Language is the foundation for communication and an important part of cultural identity and according to the last census one million people in Ireland speak Irish. This project was a global effort with our teams in Mountain View California, Zurich in Switzerland and here in Dublin working together with Irish language experts who volunteered their time to make this happen.”

To enable the Irish mode, simply click on the "Settings" wheel on the right hand corner of your inbox and select Gaeilge.

Facebook:

Mark Zuckerberg's team created the Translate Facebook app in the early days of the company so that its users could translate the service, making it available to people all over the world. It is possible for Facebook users to translate their profiles to Irish.

To switch your language setting to Irish navigate to your settings, click on “Language” on the left menu and then edit the “what language do you want to use Facebook in” setting. Irish is listed as Gaeilge.

DuoLingo:

For those of you who don't have Irish, but want learn or even just brush up on your skills, DuoLingo is an excellent app to check out.

It makes learning a new language a pleasure, rather than a struggle. It was announced this week that Gaeilge is the third most requested language on the service in Ireland.